POV: Clara

Home should have felt like mine.

The lock clicked, the door swung in, and the familiar smallness of my apartment wrapped around me—secondhand couch angled toward the window, bookshelf sagging under paperbacks, the soft lemon of cleaner I'd used last weekend. My mug waited on the counter where I'd left it, lipstick print faint on the rim. Every object sat where I'd put it, ordinary and obedient.

It didn't help.

The tether came with me.

It didn't ...